When we purchased from Kingfisher, they had 3 grades to choose from. We put an order in for something like 10+ bokkens and each of those began splintering within a week or two. We ordered another batch and had the same thing happen.

Looking back, those particular bokken seemed very light, much lighter and denser feeling than the white oak bokken we had at the dojo at the time.

Again, I would stress that this was 10 years ago, so it may very well be the case that Kingfisher bokkens have improved tremendously in terms of performance, but considering that I shelled out $200+ on them and had them splinter and break on me in matter of months, I think I'll be sticking with the white oak.